Last time I was down South, I walked into this restaurant. This White waitress came up to me and said, “We don’t serve colored people here.” I said, “That’s all right, I don’t eat colored people, no way! Bring me a whole fried chicken.”

Gregory’s joke turns a racist exclusion (“We don’t serve colored people”) into a literal misunderstanding (“I don’t eat colored people”), using wordplay to expose the absurdity and cruelty of segregation. The punchline—requesting “a whole fried chicken”—adds a second layer: it both asserts his right to be served and satirizes the racist stereotypes that often reduced Black customers to caricature. As with much of Gregory’s early civil-rights-era stand-up, the humor functions as social critique: laughter becomes a way to confront power, puncture the logic of Jim Crow, and reclaim dignity in a situation designed to humiliate.